donkey

donkey

a member of the family Equidae, descended from the wild ass of which there are still many varieties. Characteristically gray to sable in color, short of stature, long, floppy-eared and with a bray as a call instead of a whinny. Many have a dorsal and shoulder stripes. The male participates in the development of the mule and the female in the production of the hinny. Males are jacks, females are jennies. Called also ass, burro.

Donkey. By permission from Sambraus HH,Livestock Breeds, Mosby, 1992

donkey foot

an upright, narrow foot with a small sole area and usually a poorly developed frog. Works well on a donkey but in a horse expected to do fast, hard work it causes chronic mild lameness. All four feet are affected.

Eppie was now aware that her behaviour was under observation, but it was only the observation of a friendly donkey, browsing with a log fastened to his foot--a meek donkey, not scornfully critical of human trivialities, but thankful to share in them, if possible, by getting his nose scratched; and Eppie did not fail to gratify him with her usual notice, though it was attended with the inconvenience of his following them, painfully, up to the very door of their home.

When the wind changes they hitch on some donkeys and actually turn the whole upper half of the mill around until the sails are in proper position, instead of fixing the concern so that the sails could be moved instead of the mill.

So in the market-place there reigns perpetual excitement, a nameless hubbub, made up of the cries of mixed-breed porters and carriers, the beating of drums, and the twanging of horns, the neighing of mules, the braying of donkeys, the singing of women, the squalling of children, and the banging of the huge rattan, wielded by the jemadar or leader of the caravans, who beats time to this pastoral symphony.

It was a journey of more than a thousand miles from Durban, the last three hundred or so of which we had to make on foot, owing to the frequent presence of the dreadful "tsetse" fly, whose bite is fatal to all animals except donkeys and men.

Horses, rabbits, rats, donkeys, monkeys, mice, and dogs-- heavens, they have tried it on them all, tens of thousands of times and a hundred thousand times ten thousand times, and never a successful inoculation

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